MEK Clients Address Critical Issues – Indiana Infant Mortality
Over its 20-year history, MEK has been privileged to support its healthcare clients as they tackle critical issues, often taking a leadership position in defining major trends (like infant mortality). Here’s an example:
The coverage began somberly, raising awareness of a crucial life-or-death issue: “It’s a quiet crisis, but a real one. Increasingly, pregnant women who are part of the 1.4 million Hoosiers living in rural areas face a forbidding truth: despite earnest efforts to maintain a full spectrum of healthcare services, more than 30 Indiana counties today have no obstetric capacity – the specialized medical ability to support childbirth. Further, many counties have birthing centers reduced to no regular access by mothers-to-be for professional prenatal and maternal care.”
Was this from the major November 2021 Indianapolis Star front page series on infant mortality and OB deserts in Indiana?
Addressing key issues – beginning in 2017
No. The content addressing this critical issue was from a statewide 2017 column from the Indiana Rural Health Association that appeared four years before the Indianapolis Star coverage appeared.
The MEK-supported coverage continued in September 2017: “What does that mean? Pregnant Hoosier mothers in rural areas ‘have significantly higher chances of dying’ from pregnancy-related complications than do their counterparts living in urban areas. Further, the mortality rate of infants is also ‘significantly higher,’ which is a polite way to describe higher-risk conditions leading to possible infant death.”
Directly supporting “health outcomes for mothers and their babies”
In addition to providing important and timely leadership on other issues, IRHA also came to the fore in 2019, scoring a $4.5 million grant to help pregnant or interconception women in four rural Indiana counties “to improve health outcomes for mothers and their babies, and positively impact family health.” The Healthy Start Communities that Care program was indirectly referenced two years later in current Indianapolis Star coverage. MEK was privileged to help get the word out.
MEK also supported raising awareness of expanded efforts by the Southern Indiana Community Health Care (SICHC) group to transform potential obstetrics “deserts” in southern Indiana. A Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), SICHC sought and received funding to expand prenatal, pregnancy, well-women and pediatric care in medically underserved communities in southern Indiana.
IRHA has continued to champion rural mothers and rural health in Indiana. IRHA CEO Cara Veale was named by Gov. Eric Holcomb to a state public health commission “to improve the overall health of Indiana residents.” In a recent meeting of the commission, Dr. Veale raised issues of rural workforce development facing rural hospitals and clinics.
MEK also has supported IRHA’s broad efforts to promote COVID-19 safety, including major editorials by Dr. Veale in the Indianapolis Star and Inside Indiana Business to promote rural vaccines.
MEK clients make a difference and MEK is humbly privileged to support these critical life-enhancing and life-saving programs.
By Michael Snyder, MEK Managing Principal